We are going to go wheeling and camping around Elephant Butte Lake in Truth or Concequences, NM. Saturday and Sunday March 10 & 11 so bring your camping gear, pets, food, drinks and your trucks! If you don't want to camp that's fine too. (editors note: no, that would suck!) We will be meeting up Saturday at the local Walmart in T or C about 10:30 am. From there we all roll to camp on the beach at Hot Springs Landing, maybe do some local trails then its BBQ time round the ol' campfire.

Come sunday morning we pack our crap up and head to the Very Large Array (VLA) via Monticello Canyon and NM-52, roughly 5 hours (without stops) and 91 miles of fairly tame dirt we hope is passable with 2WD and some ground clearence. There's a bailout at mile 51 if you don't wanna go all the way. There's also some options on leaving things behind at the beach such as campers and gear if need be.

If anybody is off Monday, Colin will be staying over at the lake for a extra day.

This is a nice central location for both the El Paso and ABQ folks to meet up as well as anybody else, so come on, lets go!! More details to follow.

EP drivers can meet at the Shell on Trans Mtn and I-10 at 8am on the 10th for a caravan up to T or C. addy for yer gps:
6990 North Desert Boulevard, El Paso, TX

We will be using CB channel 4. For those with Motorola Talkabout style Walkie Talkies, please use channel 12. We will have communication between CB's and walkie talkies in the lead and chase vehicles to ensure all is right with the world.

Im just glad we have one place for all this stuff. I have been digging up some more side trips (one to the remains of an Indian reservation, one to a fire lookout, and another road through the forest to take us back to I25 after the VLA) Will post an update to the Garmin GPS coords once I nail down all the locations.

Ok folks so I did some more searching and digging and I found some other cool stuff to check out, if yall are interested. The Garmin file with routes and waypoint on it is at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/948604/Monticello Trip.gpx (right click and save as)

Here is a map from BaseCamp with everything on it (alternate routes in blue, planned route in yellow/magenta):
BTW: The VLA is visible from the fire lookout on the first alt route (just wont be up close), and these two routes cut quite a bit of mileage (not necessarily time) off the trip

kinda sounded like the 2 alt routes may be tough for the 2 pre-runners, myself and val. other than that... friggin wow! i guess with the amount of trucks and bodies we have goin it would be easy enough to split into 2 groups at nm52, 1 for the VLA, another for bear trap canyon & Torreon Springs Rd.

kinda sounded like the 2 alt routes may be tough for the 2 pre-runners, myself and val. other than that... friggin wow! i guess with the amount of trucks and bodies we have goin it would be easy enough to split into 2 groups at nm52, 1 for the VLA, another for bear trap canyon & Torreon Springs Rd.

Click to expand...

very true that would be possible if we get enough interest in the fire lookout

We are going to go wheeling and camping around Elephant Butte Lake in Truth or Concequences, NM. Saturday and Sunday March 10 & 11 so bring your camping gear, pets, food, drinks and your trucks! If you don't want to camp that's fine too. (editors note: no, that would suck!) We will be meeting up Saturday at the local Walmart in T or C about 10:30 am. From there we all roll to camp on the beach at Hot Springs Landing, maybe do some local trails then its BBQ time round the ol' campfire.

Come sunday morning we pack our crap up and head to the Very Large Array (VLA) via Monticello Canyon and NM-52, roughly 5 hours (without stops) and 91 miles of fairly tame dirt we hope is passable with 2WD and some ground clearence. There's a bailout at mile 51 if you don't wanna go all the way. There's also some options on leaving things behind at the beach such as campers and gear if need be.

If anybody is off Monday, Colin will be staying over at the lake for a extra day.

This is a nice central location for both the El Paso and ABQ folks to meet up as well as anybody else, so come on, lets go!! More details to follow.

EP drivers can meet at the Shell on Trans Mtn and I-10 at 8am on the 10th for a caravan up to T or C. addy for yer gps:
6990 North Desert Boulevard, El Paso, TX

We will be using CB channel 4. For those with Motorola Talkabout style Walkie Talkies, please use channel 12. We will have communication between CB's and walkie talkies in the lead and chase vehicles to ensure all is right with the world.